Bloody hell, Willem! That left a nasty taste. I’d forgotten how poisonous it had got. Glad to be banned out of it. Derek Lane his usual reasonable self. dan displaying his usual confused and over-emotional thinking; demonstrating too what a bad mistake it is to allow any one person to have censorship power over an entire discussion forum. I feel well out of that,
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It’s been there a long time…it’s like I’ve said for years convenient that most commentators in Britain (on the Left), are atheist or agnostic (or so they say), because it allows them to ignore all the sectarian prejudice and WASPISH privileged that makes up our “society”…they “piggy-back” on a religious institution but deny its influence by attempting to convince that they have no interests in the game…but first-past-the-post and the Scottish question have always given the lie to this…they don’t realise that their “protesting” easily becomes the tool of the neoliberal…keep wearing those post Enlightenment blinkers and you can justify virtually anything…look at the topics they ignore…depleted uranium use, WiFi, incineration etc. All of these being “tools of the oppressors”…you’d think decent journos would leap down the throats of such subjects but noooooo…their content to reiterate and regurgitate politics and options that belong to the Industrial Revolution no creative original thought at all…horrible, spiteful conformists huddling together in an open boat unable to chart their own course or even propel themselves (having chucked the oars away in a fit of pique!), …
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"“Why Shouldn’t a Boy Ride his Scooter?”
Sunlight strikes back from virginal brickwork stinging the face and drawing blood from eyelids,
Bright red occults yellow,
Once green foliage flashes against cheeks now flushing like a near heard closet,
Radiant pavement climbs calves and under shorts,
Warming buttocks whilst flowers try their blooms in ones and twos,
Little wheels on hard almost smooth grains grind;
“Why shouldn’t a boy ride his scooter?”
Monoped propelled,
Gripping soft warm plastic,
Lungs work the blue whip-lashed above as houses open to whispering grasses,
Hairs prickling,
Occasionally jabbing attentive sentries breeze,
Along the silver steed bounds to sniff a stream and bear off until sandalled feet span both worlds;
“Why shouldn’t a boy ride his scooter?”
Sudden penetration marks the point like time of departure and shouts its warning inside ears smashing into the heart,
Straps from a ruck-sac rub chafing against the siren call,
Hold waves and juggle in the mind a dance of sparkling bright against obeisant hills,
Residencies turn their visages away inquiring within of empty vessels;
“Why shouldn’t a boy ride his scooter?”
Pushing off,
Beating quicker now upon the path bestrides water flicking up splashing cool,
Real scents struggle through the low-laid miasmic impatient curse of man’s division,
Rattling truly as graveled sand crashes beneath nature bows and sways,
Touching gently grazing flesh;
“Why shouldn’t a boy ride his scooter?”
Slowly rising,
Reaching to the azure vault woodland offers a deepening embrace,
Beginning to jazz zipping insects hum moistened air,
Breath comes more expansive and nutritious,
Under shade a chance to stop,
Dismounts and rests against a welcoming trunk,
Leans the mount the same;
“Why shouldn’t a boy ride his scooter?”" https://www.arafel.co.uk/2018/06/why-shouldnt-boy-ride-his-scooter.html
As you may surmise my work is concerned with language and it’s teaching (among other things);
““Wolf’s Head”: The Poetry of #Arafel” : https://twitter.com/i/events/926378311365820416
An Arts/Culture section could be fun.
Music (and that includes poetry) must be one of the most powerful forces in the human world?
For sure! Think how much Hugh Masakela, and Johnny Clegg and for that matter Peter Tosh meant in bad old days SA. Not forgetting Rodriguez.
I know I would be bereft without music and am so disappointed at the relative timidity of musicians at the moment.
It’s such a shame that all the vibrancy is sucked out of poetry in schools, for the most part. Taking everything apart and cooing appreciatively at how very clever it is… but once deconstructed the magic, somehow, seems diminished.
The sheer beauty of Gerard Manley Hopkins made it through the manglings of the English teachers though, and Blake is sublime. Rhythm and feel are so important.
The likes of Eminem, for example, really work wonders with words. Detroit is abundantly gifted with great rappers, I wonder why that is, but I especially like Che Noir. She’s more a narrator than a wordsmith, perhaps.
Here in UK Kate Tempest (as was, now Kae) excels in both areas.
Some prose writers do manage this too though: Salman Rushdie (when he leaves out his tiresome dicking about being progressive and Born Again Noo Yawk), J M Coetzee, Nicola Barker (mostly).
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Hugh Masakela, and Peter Tosh all had the rhyme running through their heads; as indeed all poets do.
Maybe we can discuss this in the ‘Arts’’ section, and I will also tell you why, in my humble opinion, Shakespeare was an absolute crap poet, but also a quite brilliant playwright.
But don’t worry, I’m not opinionated…
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Crap? But Rob, you just recently quoted Sonnet 18 here…
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Look forward to that @RobG as I’m not a big fan of The Sonnets meself. Capitalised to show the required awe, of course.
Most have got nothing to say and those that used to no-longer do (sell outs), …Magnum are true to some principles…this was an interesting offering some years back (T. Klarkin is a good songwriter):
"Now you don’t know
Just how I feel
Nothing I hear
Makes it seem real
I’d be amazed
If we survive
We don’t relate
Being alive
Take this blood red rose
Go anywhere
Never let it show
You know
Black skies draw near
Waiting for me
Captured and running through life
There’s no escape
Crimson the blood of us all
Make no mistake
The problem I have
Don’t know who I am
I might be the ghost
Of every man
It’s hard to fit in
This world today
Some of us blessed
And carried away
Take this blood red rose
Go anywhere
Never let it show
You know
Black skies are here
Leaning on me
Stranded but hidden in shame
All colours pale
Walking away from it all
How to prevail?
Gone as the sunlight fills
My eyes with a sorrow
And without warning kills
The flame of tomorrow
Black skies draw near
Waiting for me
Captured and running through life
There’s no escape
Crimson the blood of us all
Make no mistake
Black skies are here
Leaning on me
Stranded but hidden in shame
All colours pale
Walking away from it all
How to prevail?"
Elements of prescience in this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plytzvAk_L4
#NeilpeartRIP
"Begin the day with a friendly voice
A companion unobtrusive
Plays that song that’s so elusive
And the magic music makes your morning mood
Off on your way, hit the open road
There is magic at your fingers
For the Spirit ever lingers
Undemanding contact in your happy solitude
Invisible airwaves crackle with life
Bright antenna bristle with the energy
Emotional feedback on timeless wavelength
Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free
All this machinery making modern music
Can still be open-hearted
Not so coldly charted, it’s really just a question
Of your honesty, yeah, your honesty
One likes to believe in the freedom of music
But glittering prizes and endless compromises
Shatter the illusion of integrity, yeah
Invisible airwaves crackle with life
Bright antenna bristle with the energy
Emotional feedback on timeless wavelength
Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free
For the words of the profits were written on the studio wall
Concert hall
And echoes with the sound of salesmen.
Of salesmen
Of salesmen" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_QtO0Rhp0w
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Clever. I like first one, decent use of imagery and nice and direct. Oops I came over all poetry teacher there, imagery… Get me 
Karen, just out of interest what did you study at Uni? (you seem to have hinted at Eng Lit).
I know sonnets are dreadfully contrived (as is all form poetry). That’s what makes it such a challenge for a writer, to try to make it appear natural.
I believe months ago I posted on here a link to a programme I made with Tim Murphy, a now deceased American poet. Tim was an absolute genius with form poetry; I’ve never quite seen anything like it, and I’ve known a lot of poets over the years.
Prior to making the programme, Tim and I were always at daggers drawn in the poetry world. My biggest criticism of him was that with his tremendous talent he never overtly addressed political issues (this was during 9/11, and all the rest of it).
Tim was what I would call a ‘pastoral poet’, in that he wrote poems about hunting and fishing and his hound dog up in the badlands of North Dakota.
Looking back on it, I suppose it’s easier to seamlessly write form poetry about pastoral stuff, rather than trying to tackle ‘life, the universe and everything’ head on.
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Rhis, Sonnet 18 is a really interesting one, which I think I’ve alluded to above.
Maybe we can continue the conversation in the Arts section.
I was thinking more of school teaching, but I did an Eng Lit option one year. The drama, prose, Chaucer was taught very well, poetry very poorly. This was at Wits in approx 1983.
Have never much appreciated haiku, just to chuck in one quick example. the rules are a way of disciplining the poet and that’s not the issue. It’s the overwhelming sense of “so what?” that these nearly always induce. But bear in mind many of us neurodivergent types aren’t ‘all that’ with touchy feely stuff. Cranes on bamboo stalks are great in their way though
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Great Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s haiku on his ageing body’s doughty response to icy surfaces:
Dangerous pavements!
But this year I face the ice
With my father’s stick.
I’m quite neuro-non-typical too, K. But that has the power to bring tears even so. (Put it down to the famous ‘emotional lability’ of the oldies…) 
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To Rob: I’m afraid I have a strong resistance to too much rational analysis of barddoniaeth. I remember confirming this feeling when I was an undergrad at Warwick uni, doing an English and European Lit. degree:
One of my lecturers in the English department (and later a good friend) was the poet Paul Merchant, son of Moelwyn Merchant. Both of them were close personal friends of Ted Hughes, and Moelwyn at that time was also producing arts interviews for BBC Radio 3.
Moelwyn had contacted Ted to ask him to appear on an interview to speak about his barddoniaeth. Ted wrote back to decline, and - because Moelwyn was a friend - he provided him with a striking explanation of why. Paul had a facsimile of this letter, which he brought to a seminar, where he gave me a copy. I have lived by the insight contained in it ever since, as regards speaking about poetry.
At one point, Ted writes about being at Cambridge “in the Leavisite 50s” where rational analysis was all the thing. As a result of trying to fall in with this approach, he said that he always came away with “a sense that whole areas of my poetic forest had been cut down and concreted over”. He then gave an account of a shamanic dream he’d had, in the throes of this time, an account which has since become famous. I quote it hear:
From the writings of Ted Hughes:
"At Cambridge University… students were expected to produce a weekly essay…. I soon became aware of an inexplicable resistance… After several hours each day, usually on into the night, I had covered many pages, all torn up, and had retreated again and again to my opening sentence that I had rewritten and rearranged dozens of times… At last I had to give up and go to bed.
I began to dream.
I dreamed I had never left my table and was still sitting there, bent over the lamplit piece of foolscap, staring at the same few lines across the top.
Suddenly my attention was drawn to the door. I thought I had heard something there. As I waited, listening, I saw the door was opening slowly. Then a head came round the edge of the door. It was about the height of a man’s head but clearly the head of a fox though the light over there was dim.
The door opened wide and down the short stair and across the room towards me came a figure that was at the same time a skinny man and a fox walking erect on its hind legs.
It was a fox, but the size of a wolf. As it approached and came into the light I saw that its body and limbs had just now stepped out of a furnace.
Every inch was roasted, smouldering, black-charred, split and bleeding. Its eyes, which were level with mine where I sat, dazzled with the intensity of the pain. It came up until it stood beside me. Then it spread its hand – a human hand as I now saw, but burned and bleeding like the rest of him – flat palm down on the blank space of my page. At the same time it said: ‘Stop this – you are destroying us.’
Then as it lifted its hand away I saw the blood-print, like a palmist’s specimen, with all the lines and creases, in wet, glistening blood on the page.
I immediately woke up. The impression of reality was so total, I got out of bed to look at the papers on my table, quite certain that I would see the blood-print there on the page."
Says it all, dunnit? 
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Sure we should do it right away! I’ll start one re: Keats and the teaching of classical languages as a necessary comparative discipline with regard to learning the structure of language…
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‘life, the universe and everything’ got to be said again, Douglas was a genius… ; “Zaphod’s just zis guy, you know!”
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“Gerard Manley Hopkins” Yeah he did it for me too, how word pictures become more than the sum etc.
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That’s fun. I expect Spike Milligan might have written a few too.
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Ted Hughes I like, and Larkin. It’s mostly just odd memorable images that stick, though I can recite This Be The Verse.
The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun… That was one of Ted’s.
The dream-fox conjured up an image from Crap Taxidermy… possibly this one
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Thanks for the replies.
I find it quite incredible how the narrative for the regulars at TLN continues to be “Boris bad, should have locked down earlier, and anyone protesting against any of the measures is just interested in making profit”. That’s what it seems to me in a nutshell. And it doesn’t seem to matter to them how many further restrictions are imposed from above – quarantines, masks (in the middle of summer!), experimental jabs (first the vulnerable, then gradually the rest, now the schoolkids).
Just now I came back from a “green” country, but still this requires a negative test before boarding, completing a locator form which must contain a booked test within 2 days in the UK. And this test must be at a private provider (not NHS) and cost me £100 (for about 20 seconds of work).
What’s also so awful about the viewpoint that being critical means you’re interested in profits is that it’s such a “functional” view of what humans are. Being able to see, hug, kiss friends, to be able to have conversations or share a smile with fellow humans etc., all has zero value. Spending hours on stupid little gadgets filling out forms trying to get a QR code is not seen as any trouble. Forget about asking for a pint of beer from a waiter – order & pay online. We just all have to bear this nonsense. It’s insane.
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